


Plunge

by anextrapart



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 14:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9445916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anextrapart/pseuds/anextrapart
Summary: "You want me to do what?"





	

"You want me to do _what_?" Marcus pauses mid-chew and stares at Abby, his fork raised halfway to his mouth from his dinner plate.

"You heard me."

Sensing an impending _discussion_ and privately dreading the interruption to his meal—he loves the woman but he's _hungry_ , damn it—he puts down his fork. "I'm sincerely hoping that I didn't."

"I want you to come swimming with me," she repeats.

"You mean sometime this summer, right?" A long, troubling silence follows. "Abby, tell me that's what you mean."

"I was thinking the day after tomorrow would be good," Abby continues as though she hasn't heard him, "since both of our schedules are clear all day."

"First of all, our schedules are never clear. And second of all, it's the middle of winter."

"I cleared them. And the fact that it's winter is the whole point: I've been discussing it with Lincoln and Nyko and doing some of my own research—apparently there are several health benefits to swimming in very cold water. The Grounders do it all the time and I think it would be a great opportunity to learn from them."

Her face is lit up with excitement and scientific curiosity.

God help him.

"I was hoping to keep my fingers and toes for a few more years, though."

Abby rolls her eyes. "We won't be in the water long enough to develop frostbite. Your appendages will be just fine."

"All of them? Because I don't have any aspirations to be the first one-armed Chancellor."

"Don't be so dramatic. It will be fun."

" _Fun_?" He thinks his voice might have taken on a slightly hysterical quality. "There's snow on the ground."

"Not recent snow—you've seen how mild the weather has been recently. The water temperature is above freezing."

That's… conveniently vague. He narrows his eyes at her. "How _far_ above?"

"The water temperature is several significant degrees above freezing," she informs him haughtily. "This is definitely doable."

"Well sure it's _doable_."

"But?"

He returns to his meal before answering, taking a large bite and chewing slowly because he can't quite resist the temptation to irritate her.

"But I really don't want to do it."

He watches the gears turning in her head for a moment before she does exactly what he expects, visibly softening and resting her hand on his arm while staring at him with big eyes.

"Please, Marcus?"

He smirks. One, because he knows her so well, and two, because this is going to be one of the very rare times when that approach doesn't work for her.

It's for her own good, really.

"Do you not remember a few weeks back when the water heating system shut down while you were in the shower?"

"I handled that very gracefully—the engineer who caused it won't make the same mistake again."

"You threatened to dismember him," he says around a mouthful of vegetables.

"Not to his face."

Technically true, but not actually his point.

"Maybe not, but even that water was probably warmer than what you're suggesting we go swimming in—and we barely even know _how_ to swim. This is a terrible idea," says with a dismissive laugh.

He's hoping to consider the matter dropped, and takes another bite of his dinner before glancing up at her again.

_Uh oh._

He remembers that glare.

There are blaring alarms in his head and he's frantically calculating damage control tactics when Clarke approaches with her own plateful of food and unknowingly stays his execution.

He's being overdramatic, of course, but he and Abby are barreling towards an argument and he so desperately hates fighting with her. Bickering, disagreeing, strategizing—those he doesn't mind. But actual fighting? Fighting leaves a bitter taste in his mouth that reminds him of life back on the Ark.

Clarke smiles at them and takes a seat at their table. "What are you guys up to?"

" _I_ was just leaving." Abby stands and with a glare at him and a gentle squeeze to Clarke's shoulder, she collects both his and her own plate and storms off.

He stares mournfully after her, thankful that she'll never know he's partially mourning the loss of his unfinished dinner along with her sudden departure.

It's fifty-fifty, though.

…Maybe sixty-forty. In dinner's favor.

(He's _hungry_ , okay?)

Clarke watches Abby leave and then turns to him with comically wide eyes. "Wow, what did you do? I haven't seen her face look like that since I was little and drew all over the walls." 

Marcus waves her off, absently adding, "That's nothing. Barely even a Level Two."

He doesn't register what he's said until Clarke leans towards him conspiratorially.

"Explain."

Ah, yes. Hunger is making him especially stupid this evening.

He steals the carrots off of Clarke's plate—she doesn't like them anyway—to buy himself a minute to think.

"We worked on the council together for a long time. Eventually, I was able to rate how angry she was and determine the amount of hurt I was in for as a result." He feels a little guilty for how self-serving it sounds and rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.

Clarke, however, ignores his obvious discomfort completely and grins like he's just given her a gift. "How many levels are there?"

"Five."

"Does she know about this?"

He can't help a wry, "Would I still be alive if she did?"

"You ever get to level five?"

"Only once a year or so." At least once a quarter, actually, but who's counting? "At one point I was forced to consider adding a Level Six."

"Did that have anything to do with the medical storage relocation incident?"

He eats a carrot as innocently as possible. "It might have had something to do with that."

"I never realized you were involved in that, although I guess maybe I should've—she was yelling about it for months."

"Clarke, she was still yelling at me for that _last week_."

She laughs in what he feels to be a particularly unsympathetic manner, considering how apparent it is that he is never, _ever_ going to hear the end of it for that particular incident.

"So what did you do this time?"

He feels a tension headache coming on. "She wants to go swimming."

"What, like this summer?"

"No, like the day after tomorrow."

"…but it's winter." Her brow furrows in confusion. "That's insane."

_Exactly._

He leans forward in his chair, mirroring Clarke's position.

"Never tell her I said this," he says, "but sometimes I don't know where you get your good sense."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When he enters their room that evening, Abby is already asleep.

There's a hearty snack of nuts and dried fruit left for him on the nightstand on his side of the bed.

Smiling to himself, he eats quickly before preparing for bed and slipping between the sheets. When he curls up behind her and wraps an arm around her waist, he feels her wake slightly, just as she always does.

"Thank you," he whispers.

Still half-asleep, she mumbles an acknowledgement.

And, because he just can't help himself, "I'm still not going ice-swimming."

She kicks him in the shin half-heartedly, and he presses his cold feet against her calf in retaliation.

"I love you," he whispers into her hair.

Already almost asleep again, she cuddles back against him more securely and mutters something entirely unintelligible.

He knows what she meant though.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When he wakes the next morning Abby is already gone for an early shift, and so he spends much of the day blissfully unconcerned about near-frozen lakes and what they might do to the human body.

Then he runs into Clarke in the hallway.

She looks to be in a rush, and thus it is in passing that she cheerfully informs him, "Bellamy, Lincoln, Octavia, and I are going swimming tomorrow."

_What?_

"What?"

"Yeah, Lincoln explained the whole thing and it sounds cool. So you might want to tell mom that you actually _do_ want to go-"

She's speed-walking backwards away from him now, still clearly in a rush, and he smothers the urge to run after her. He's kind of rooted to the spot in bewilderment anyway.

"-because now she can join the four of us with or without you, and I think you and I both know it would be better for you to just come along."

"But…"

"It'll be fun, Marcus," she enthuses, finally turning to jog down the hall away from him towards whatever is apparently more important than explaining to him what the hell is going on.

How did this _happen?_

There definitely isn't a hint of a whine in his voice when he calls after her, "You were supposed to be the sensible one!"

She doesn't even turn around when she calls back,

"Are you new here?"

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

After Clarke's utter betrayal, he lets himself sulk for a minute and then goes to find Abby in Medical, which has been experiencing an unprecedented lack of patients recently and left her to do tasks such as her current one: organizing the shelves of supplies.

He expects six hypothermia patients will soon liven things up considerably.

He greets her to announce his presence and finds himself on the receiving end of a glare slightly less withering than the one he'd received at dinner the previous evening.

Pleased to be able to downgrade to Level One—highly manageable and of no threat to his health (physical or otherwise)—he simply crosses his arms and stares at her with a carefully neutral expression.

She breaks first.

" _What_?"

"Whatever happened to something like, 'Hi, Marcus.'?"

She huffs. "I'm busy, Marcus."

He will not laugh. "'How was your day, Marcus?' 'It's so good to see you, Marcus.' 'Your hair looks nice today, Marcus.'"

Her lips twitch towards a smile, just as he was hoping.

"I'm sorry, Abby."

She places the last few items she'd been stacking on the shelf and comes to stand in front of him. "For calling my fantastic idea terrible?"

"For being dismissive instead of further considering your idea—which, full disclosure, I do still maintain is kind of terrible."

She appraises him for a minute before stepping forward and tugging him into a hug. "Fair enough."

He hugs her back tightly, feeling some tension drift from his body.

"Sorry I stole your dinner," she mumbles into his chest.

He shrugs it off. "You left me a snack."

Pulling back to look at him, she runs her fingers through his hair and smiles, teasingly.

"Your hair does look nice today."

Chuckling, he kisses her forehead. "Thanks, I thought so too."

"You are coming swimming though, right?"

He sighs heavily, resigned.

"You're not allowed to leave me if I lose all my fingers to frostbite," he warns.

Abby beams. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Or my toes."

She pats his cheek. "We'll see."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

They need to leave early the next morning, and Abby wakes him with a gentle hand on his back.

"Marcus, time to get up."

Groaning, he buries his face in his pillow and tilts slightly away from where she's sitting at his hip. "Don't want to."

"I'll make it worth your while." Her fingers run lightly across the back of his neck.

That requires elaboration.

"Is this a sex bribe or a coffee bribe?"

"Do you have a preference?"

He starts weighing his options—coffee will wake him up but is far less fun than sex with Abby, but sex with Abby is going to make it a hell of a lot more difficult to motivate himself to get out of this bed—and apparently takes too long because her voice pulls him from his musings.

"Marcus?"

He rolls to lay on his back and stares up at her blearily. "I'm deciding."

She tugs a lock of his hair in mock annoyance. "Get your ass out of bed, Kane."

"It's a good bed, though. Warm."

"It will still be here when we get back."

"Not if we're dead," he grumbles, closing his eyes again.

"We're not going to die."

"Parts of us could die."

He can practically hear her rolling her eyes. "For the tenth—and hopefully _final—_ time, _all of your appendages will be fine._ "

After allowing himself a few more blissful seconds of warmth, he finally heaves himself up to sit beside her on the edge of the bed and, with sympathy that is probably faked but that he appreciates nonetheless, she presses a steaming mug into his hands.

He takes a long, fortifying sip of coffee.

"Why am I doing this, again?"

Abby lays her head on his shoulder. "Because you love me."

He hums thoughtfully and drops his head to rest on top of hers. "Why is that, again?"

"Because I'm amazing."

Well, she's not wrong.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Half a day later, they've returned to their room and are cocooned in bed beneath every blanket they have, plus some that they commandeered from storage without following the proper sign-out protocol. Two mugs sit on their table, emptied while the contents were still tongue-burningly hot. Arkadia's head cook is in possession of official, nigh-threatening Chancellors' orders informing her that this evening's supper is to be nothing other then a hot stew of some kind.

The lump of blankets and warm clothes vaguely shaped like Abby tries, impossibly, to huddle closer to him. "Marcus?"

"Hm?"

"That was a terrible idea."

Everything is quiet for a second, and then he laughs until his stomach hurts. Wrapping her up even more tightly in his arms, he presses their foreheads together.

"God, I love you."

"I love you too, but why do you let me do things like this?"

She's definitely kidding, but, " _Let_ you?"    

"If anyone was going to stop me, it would have to have been you," she reasons.

"You're just very persuasive. Although if I'd known it meant we'd have an excuse to stay in bed for the rest of the day I probably would have agreed sooner."

"Mm, that is a bright side."

She shivers suddenly, neither of them quite warm yet.

"I can't believe how cold it was," she mutters.

" _Winter_ , babe."

"Still." She giggles in that way that still delights him. "I thought Bellamy was going to cry."

"I thought _I_ was going to cry."

Abby watches him quietly for a bit, reaching up to brush some still-damp hair back off his forehead.

"You had fun though, right?"

She sounds more tentative than he is used to, something soft and hesitant in her eyes.

He thinks back a few hours, to watching the kids and their various reactions to the cold water. Lincoln, unbothered. Octavia, unsuccessfully pretending to be unbothered. Clarke and Bellamy, making no effort whatsoever to pretend to be unbothered.

He thinks back to the moment he and Abby were finally completely submerged in the lake, shivering and laughing and shouting all at once, clinging to each other tightly.

"Yeah," he whispers, meaning it. "I had fun." He pokes her in the side. "I get to pick the next half-crazy, potentially-dangerous thing we do though, okay?"

"Deal." She tucks her head under his chin. "Just as long as it doesn't involve rearranging or relocating my storage area."

Yeah, he's definitely never going to hear the end of that one.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

fin.

 

 

 

-

On Tumblr ([x](http://anextrapart.tumblr.com/post/156292669023/plunge))


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